How to Eco-Shop to Save Money and Planet

You may want to rethink old habits in your quest to go green.

Perhaps, you have always wanted to make a difference in helping conserve natural resources. At the same time, you might not know the best ways to get started helping the environment so it can suit your lifestyle. However, when each of us makes a few small changes to reduce our impact on the planet, then those efforts are multiplied to bring real change. Let me share some ways to eco-shop to save money and planet that can help inspire you.

The easiest introduction to going green is by asking what you really need before buying another item or returning things to your closet. Make it a point to look for sustainable fashion with fabrics that use organic cotton, linen to 100% recycled polyester.

Ask yourself how much you value those unnecessary items and their holds over you? Is the item something that you love so much that you must buy or keep it or suffer if you don’t? On the other hand, if the item is just something that you want to buy because it’s on sale and not necessarily one to steal your heart, then you might want to skip that purchase or recycle it.

For example, maybe you bought an expensive top for a ridiculously low fraction of its original price that also happens to be a sickly shade of pale yellow with polka dots. This color washes your face out while the cut and quality of this top are wonderful, but you don’t have many other pieces to coordinate this top with. Instead, it keeps hanging in the back of your closet time after time, unworn. The truth is you couldn’t help yourself from snagging such a tremendous bargain. Judging by the marked down price tag of how much money you saved does not mean you are ahead if that top is too mismatched for the other pieces in your wardrobe. In all honesty, the top that you don’t seem to wear is more a trophy for your bargain shopping expertise than a helpful addition to your closet.

I don’t know about you, but I do have a tendency to be drawn to similar styles and colors of clothes or makeup. The cut of a pair of pants could be slightly fuller or slimmer, but I tell myself that one makes my waist smaller or gives me a better behind from the fit. In reality though, I don’t need five or six pairs of black pants at the same time. I am not even counting your fat pants, skinny pants or the ones in your current size.

Too many of the same items like my excess number of black pants is far from ideal. Having more of the same pieces restricts closet space and can overcrowd your other outfits, contributing to wrinkling and more work for you to later steam or iron them. However, trying those pants on again and forcing myself to study my reflection in a full-length mirror to compare the best fit simplifies hunting through a stuffed closet and settling on the right black pair.

How many of us keep things around the house that may need a repair? I have a sewing pile for rips, lost buttons and broken zippers. A tiny rip to stitch up or hem something or replace buttons are one thing, but repairing a broken zipper that ran out off its track is more complicated. The truth is my broken zipper pile usually never goes down because I avoid fixing them because of how much work. I could have saved myself the trouble and just ditched the broken zippered items in the first place and never have missed them.

It is easy to walk into any store or to browse online and find something that seems perfect and made to your exact specifications. Yet, you didn’t read the care instructions and how needy this piece like a leather coat would be to upkeep. It didn’t make you feel any better when you forgot to do comparison shopping and assumed this was the average going price.

In summary, these are only a few examples of how you can save money, organize, recycle and do a small part to go green by thinking before purchasing.

For additional eco-friendly tips, I hope you also read another helpful post. What do you do to eco-shop to save money and planet?

1 Comment

gloria patterson

March 19, 2019 / 12:08 pm

I would print this out for my mother but she would just read it and roll her eyes at me. My mother loves shopping and if it is on sale all the better. Me I hate to shop and now that I am retired I only buy when I really need something. I will repair the simple problems but zipper are trashed ASAP 🙂